1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 2481
As a senior technician in the group of traversers, Yu Feng is naturally qualified to use the large database of Victory Fort to search for various secret information, including various mineral deposit information.He is also one of the few insiders about the mineral deposits in the Sumatra Island area, so he believes that although the information provided by Tian Yeyou to the Xingdao Colonial Area is not false, it has played a certain role in misleading, making Roger and Tan Juren understand the local area. Misjudged the prospects for industrial development.

Yu Feng's understanding of the industrial system is obviously more comprehensive than Tian Yeyou's. In addition, he is also engaged in shipping, and he is very familiar with the transportation costs of bulk materials such as coal and iron. Naturally, he knows that if he wants to build a complete industrial system in this area How difficult will it be.

Therefore, in his reply to the Xingdao colonial area, Yu Feng clearly pointed out, "The development of your region should be based on environmental conditions, focusing on mineral development and petrochemical industries, and not pursuing large and comprehensive. If you are specialized and refined, the future The prospects are promising.”

Of course, Yu Feng was very happy to satisfy the Xingdao colonial area's request to purchase engines, generators and other equipment.Since Xingdao has provided Yu's Shipping Company with a series of exclusive treatment, it is only natural for them to reciprocate.

Considering that the local area already has initial oil production capacity, fuel supply is not a problem. Whether it is an engine or a generator, the cost of use for Sing Tao will be very low.However, for Sing Tao, which has no industrial foundation, there is actually no need for a large amount of electricity, and the scope of application at this stage is still relatively limited.

But in any case, the development of the Dumai oilfield project opened a new window for the Xingdao colonial area, allowing this border area, which has not received enough attention all year round, to finally get a good sustainable development project.The development progress of the Xingdao colonial area is much slower than that of other overseas colonial areas, but the appearance of the Dumai oilfield project can solve the most difficult funding problem for Xingdao in the development process. Many plans that had been put on hold for many years were launched one by one.

Both the South China Sea and the Java Sea region have a large number of undeveloped areas, but in the past, the Singdao colonial area was limited by funds and manpower, and could not operate large-scale development projects.Now that Tian Yeyou, a great god, has finally been invited to stay here, and other mining projects will enter the development stage in the future. The funding problem that has plagued Xingdao for many years is finally expected to be completely resolved.

Roger was finally able to dig out the "Star Island Garrison Plan" he wrote several years ago, and started to put it into practice one by one.

In other overseas colonial areas at the same level as Xingdao, most of the current garrisons are at the division level. Similar to the northern theater, which is a front-line area with frequent warfare, there will be cavalry battalions, artillery battalions, amphibious battalions, The engineering battalion and reconnaissance battalion are independently established, and their strength is already very impressive.

On the other hand, in Xingdao, although Roger formed a garrison formation such as the South China Sea Independent Brigade very early, and upgraded it to the South China Sea Independent Battalion after the Manila Battle of the Western Expedition in 1637, but after that, due to funds and personnel, Restricted by other objective factors, the growth rate of the garrison has slowed down, and so far it is still at the regiment level with less than [-] troops, far behind other colonial areas of the same level.

As for those advanced but expensive new weapons and equipment, the Xingdao garrison was unable to implement large-scale deployment due to financial constraints, and could only symbolically arm one or two companies.As for the naval fleet, Roger could only insist on using the warships built in the early years due to the greater military expenditure involved in building new warships.When rich places like the Zhoushan colonial area were already building their own iron-clad steamships side by side, the naval fleet of the Xingdao colonial area still had a considerable part of the warships built in the [-]s.

The commissioning of the Dumai oilfield project allowed Roger to see the possibility of overtaking on curves in the military field. As long as it can get technical support from China, the navy of Xingdao has every chance to use internal combustion engines as the next round of warship updates. A new type of warship with powered propulsion.It is foreseeable that the ease of use and speed provided by this new type of power system will exceed the existing warships, and the cost of using it in the Xingdao colonial area will also be much lower than the steam warships that use coal as fuel—after all Prior to this, the coal used in the Xingdao area was transported by sea over long distances, and the cost was probably the highest among all overseas colonial areas.

For Tan Juren, the head of civil affairs, his first goal is very simple, which is to use the development opportunity brought by the Dumai oilfield project to introduce more immigrants to the Xingdao colonial area.Only when the population base is improved, will Xingdao have enough labor force to realize other plans, which of course include Roger's military expansion plan.

Prior to this, Xingdao was one of the main exile places for felons and prisoners of war due to its location on the border. There were several hard labor camps built on Xingdao alone, where thousands of prisoners were held all year round.Although these prisoners are cheap labor forces that can be driven at will, because the personal cultural foundation of these prisoners is often extremely low, the tasks that can be performed can only be the simplest manual labor, and the value that can be produced is actually extremely limited.

And such a special environment also makes it difficult for the people in Haihan to have the will to immigrate to the Xingdao colonial area, even if the conditions provided by the Xingdao government for immigrants are not inferior to other colonial areas, even in terms of land quotas and tax collection. There are better preferential conditions, but it is still difficult to attract immigrants to settle in Xingdao.

Today, the proportion of Han Chinese in the permanent population of Sing Tao is also the lowest among all overseas colonial areas, not even half.Even among the local troops, a considerable proportion of soldiers are Malays, Thais, and Indians from Southeast Asia, as well as blacks from East Africa and the Middle East provided by slave traders, which can be called a multinational force.Even Roger himself often joked that the troops under his command were a motley crew.

However, after the petrochemical project in Xingdao, the economic situation will definitely be greatly improved, and the local government will also have more funds to improve the local material living standards, and improve the construction of supporting facilities such as sanitation, culture, education, and entertainment. High income and good living environment can be used as conditions to attract Han immigrants.

When the population base reaches a certain size, the Xingdao colonial area can slowly wash away the public image of "a place where criminals are exiled" and replace it with the image of an emerging industrial area and regional trade hub, so that the area under the rule can return to Haihan overseas The development of the colonial area is on track.

(End of this chapter)